Chapter Five – Faith

 

We slid into the booth of the little diner across the way from the morgue, and the waitress Sarah brought us both water. Sam ordered a sweet tea while I just got coffee. He and I had introduced ourselves on the short walk over.

“Tell me what you know,” Sam said as the waitress walked away to get our drink orders.

“Well, you don’t beat around the bush, now do you?” I asked, my arms folded across my chest as I leaned back in the booth.

“Comes with the job,” he said. “Deadlines and stuff.”

“I almost went for a journalism degree,” I said idly.

“Yeah? Figure out there was no money in it?”

“You look like you’re doing all right.”

He smiled, opening his mouth like he was about to say something, but quickly thought better of it. “I’m an exception, you might say.”

I nodded a little as Sarah returned with our drinks. As she headed off, Sam began to speak again.

“I take it, from the way you approached me back there, you know your boss just brushed me off. Were you listening in or something?”

I glanced away, trying to hide my shame. I’d been hiding right outside the office door as they’d spoken, trying to get an idea of what Sam might have wanted in town. After all, it wasn’t every day that a handsome reporter just drops into town and starts poking around for the beginnings of a story.

“Or is it just some kind of sixth sense you have?” he continued.

I shook my head, focused back on him. “No, I was listening in. I was just curious, that’s all.”

“So what do you have to tell me, then?”

I looked around the empty diner to make sure no one was immediately around us. Like Dr. Lawrence had said when Eb and his son were bringing in the remains, there was no sense in setting off a panic. I leaned in closer, dropped my voice to almost a whisper. “Well, it’s about the livestock mutilation you were asking about.”

“Yeah?” he asked, meeting me halfway. “What about it?”

“It’s there, in one of the refrigeration units.”

“Do you know if he’s the one that called the FBI?”

“I think he did, but I can’t be sure,” I admitted. “I was, um, indisposed at the time.”

“Like you weren’t in the room? Or…?”

“Something like that,” I said quickly, not wanting to admit to this handsome stranger that I’d been puking my guts up in the sink.

“How do you know it’s there?”

“Well, for one, I saw it.”

“What did it look like?”

I made a face as I swallowed, my mouth suddenly drier than west Texas during a drought. “Bad,” I said. “Really, really bad.”

“Can you describe it?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell. Agile fingers danced on the screen as he began to pull up something. He slid it across to me, pictures of a traditional cattle mutilation clearly showing.

“No,” I said, making a face as I glanced at it. “Believe me, no. I’ve spent the last two days looking all over for pictures of what I saw, and nothing looks the same. Nothing’s even close.”

Eyes narrowed, he took the phone away. “Well, you know a lot of those are coyotes, right? Other scavengers?”

“Believe me,” I said, taking a sip of my hot, black coffee, “this wasn’t a coyote.”

I described the remains to him, of how the skin had been peeled from the body, and all the blood drained away.

“No,” he agreed as he settled back into the bench seat, his eyes off somewhere else like he was going through a stack of information in his head, “definitely not a coyote.”

“Any idea what it could have been?” I asked, peering up at him for any sign that maybe he knew what was going on. Just something about the way he kept his shoulders back, the way he’d glanced around the room the moment we’d sat down, told me this guy was competent, and had an inkling of what might have happened to that poor hog in Eb Shook’s pasture. “Of what could have done something like that?”

“Maybe,” he admitted. But then, after a moment, something in his eyes seemed to change. To shift. I don’t know how, but I suddenly knew he was holding out on me. “I mean, it sounds like a wolf or a bear attack or something to me. Which is weird in this part of Texas, but not unheard of.”

I barked out a sharp retort of a laugh. “Really? That’s the line you’re going to feed me?”

“What?” he asked, trying to look innocent despite the fact that his eyes were darting around the diner to see if anyone had heard my reproach. “Just telling you what I think it could possibly be.”

“Bull. Shit. And you know it.”

“Look, I don’t know what killed that pig.” He leaned in closer, lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “And neither do you. It could have been a bear or a wolf, you don’t know.”

“Believe me,” I said. “I’ve seen pictures of what those attacks look like. I’ve spent the last two or three days digging through picture after picture after picture, all sorts of wildlife attacks, all sorts of mutilations of livestock. This wasn’t one from a wolf or a bear. What’re you trying to pull on me, here?”

“I’m not trying to pull anything on you, Faith. I’m just trying to get all the facts for a story, okay? Now, can you get me in to see the remains?”

“Get you in to see them?” I replied, leaning back in the bench seat and crossing my legs beneath the table. “Why should I do that when you’re lying to me, same as my boss lied to you?”

“Look,” he said, “I’m not lying, all right? I really don’t know what killed that pig.”

I sat there for a moment, coffee cooling in front of me as I eyed him.

“Come on,” he said, before taking a sip of his sweet tea. “At the very least, let me borrow the keys to get in.”

He was hiding a secret behind those crystal clear blue eyes of his, I knew. And, on top of that, something about him just screamed danger. Like, if I headed down this path, nothing was going to be exactly the same as it had been.

But hadn’t I already stepped onto that path the moment Eb Shook brought in his dead swine? Hadn’t I been on it for the last three days with no sleep, constantly researching macabre pictures of mutilated livestock corpses?

Deep down, though, I knew I wanted one thing more than anything else.

And it wasn’t to get to know this sexy newspaper reporter better, either. Although that would be a nice bonus.

No, instead, I wanted to know what was stalking the nights of Potterswell. What had killed that creature in such a horrific way? Was it actually a UFO? Or members of a cult? Or, as Sam here had suggested, was it something as simple as a wolf or a bear that had done the deed?

And something told me this man was the one who could help me discover the truth.

“Okay,” I said, finally. “I won’t let you borrow my keys, but I will take you in there. Okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. How is tonight for you?”

“Ten o’clock?” I offered. “Dr. Lawrence’ll be gone by then, and there shouldn’t be anyone wandering the streets.”

“Ten o’clock it is.”

“But,” I said, reaching across the table and putting my hand next to his, “I want you to promise me something in exchange.”

His eyes darted down to my extended hand, my fingers just inches from his. “What’s that?” he asked as his eyes flicked back to mine.

“As soon as you know what this thing is,” I said with careful deliberation so there would be no doubt about my words, “I want you to tell me.”

“Deal,” he said.

Too bad that, when everything was said and done, I wouldn’t actually want to know. The truth would be more than I could handle.